Assclowns of the Week #87: Let Sleeping Elephants Lie edition

And nothing scares me politically more than the MSM making a big fucking deal over a quadrennial straw poll that’s hardly more scientific, accurate, predictive or otherwise efficacious than a high school popularity contest. It scares me to see the mainstream media treating this as if it was more important than the Second Coming, which is, after all, what evangelicals keep hoping for every four years. It frightens me to see straw poll winners like Michele Bachmann (R-Guyana) (1) parading about snubbing other Republicans and acting “like she was Madonna.”

So while the emphasis on this 87th edition of ACOTW is on Iowa this past week, there are other assclowns who’d made the grade, such as Phil Hinkle (5) for bolstering the rent boy industry a la Ted Haggard and George Reikers and Louis Gohmert (10) for informing us what Republicans would really like to do with women.

So get on the golf cart of progress as we review this Iowa bumper crop of Republican assclowns and much, much more!

10) Rep. Louis Gohmert

A while ago, Politico published a story about John Boehner and his staff using golf balls sporting House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s likeness on them but Politico folded and took down the story when Boehner’s office denied the allegations. But this past week when speaking to conservative radio talk show host Lars Larson, this exchange between Larson and Rep. Louis Gohmert was put on the air,

LARSON: My producer is from Ohio. He noticed that John Boehner was apparently using Nancy Pelosi golf balls at a recent fundraiser, and my producer wants to get a whole sleeve of those things. He thinks it might make him hit better.

GOHMERT: [laughs] I’ll bet you it’ll put a little extra oomph in it. No kidding, yeah. Well, I’ll have to check on that. I’ll have to see where we get those.

The story about Pelosi golf balls was vigorously denied so Politico was forced to pull the story but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true, if Wilson, the aptly-named Sleazeball Nancy Pelosi line and these douchebags is any indication, examples of Pelosi golf balls sold on the internet that I found after just five minutes of Googling.

Next time, Politico, do your fucking research before taking down stories just because serial liars like John Boehner deny them.

9) Tim Pawlenty

"Hi, I’m Tim Pawlenty and I’m running for president. Am I catching you at a bad time?"

Poor TPaw. If he was any more boring, he’d have a Y-shaped incision on his torso. After finishing a distant third to Michele Bachmann and her 4823 bought votes and Ron Paul, the former Minnesota governor announced he was dropping out of the race just a day after saying he was looking forward to a long election. Just prior to the straw poll, the highlight of Pawlenty’s campaign was telling Mitt Romney during the GOP debate that he’d mow his lawn (despite being a US citizen).

Boy, that was fast. Emeril’s sitcom lasted longer than Pawlenty’s campaign. Michele Bachmann’s had migraines that’s lasted longer than Pawlenty’s campaign. Newt Gingrich has had marriages that lasted longer than… OK, maybe not all of them.

8) Vernon Robinson

Vern Robinson is the Lyndon LaRouche of North Carolina. This perennial political bridesmaid has been unsuccessfully running for Congress for years. This time, he’s dusting off his old talking points about Barack Obama. This is an actual excerpt from his fundraising email:

While Obama was smoking marijuana and snorting cocaine, I was earning badges to become an Eagle Scout. While Obama was being mentored by Communist Party Member Frank Davis, I was taught to love God and country by my parents. While Obama was consorting with Marxist professors, Black Panthers, trial lawyers, union bosses, hippie peaceniks, anti-Christian atheists, militant homosexual agitators, radical pro-abortion feminists, gun grabbers, amnesty zealots, Chi-Com sympathizers, globalists who worship at the altar of the UN, and environmentalist wackos, I was earning my bachelor's degree alongside my fellow cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

And since Mr. Obama got elected President of the United States, you’ve done… what? Huh, Vern? Cain't hear ya.

7) BART

You’d never imagine the dictatorial, censorial tactics of Iran two years ago would ever be used in the San Francisco Bay area, one of the last bastions of liberalism. But you’d be wrong, grasshopper.

Last week, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) authorities decided to suspend or jam wireless signals in order to prevent a planned demonstration in protest of BART cops shooting a 45 year-old man. This is precisely the type of censorship that we heard about out of Iran during the protests two years ago and what the right wing government of David Cameron is mulling now. If you thought this would be the cause for another protest, you thought wrong.

6) Rick Santorum

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (R-Google), meant well. He just wanted to hand out homemade jelly and show his supporters a good time last Saturday at “Rick Santorum’s Summer Dance Party” at the Iowa State Fair. It sounded like a pretty fun affair, starring the Crickets and the Big Bopper, Jr. and...

Back in 1959, the 22-year old Buddy Holly and the 28-year old original Big Bopper, plus 17-year old Ritchie Valens, were killed in a plane crash -- in Iowa, during a Midwestern tour called the “Winter Dance Party.”

Who were the designated pilots for the out-of-staters? Wiley Post III, Amelia Earhart’s granddaughter, Mohammed Atta?

5) Indiana State Rep. Phil Hinkle

As is always the case, Republicans have to mightily vie with each other and do and/or say something monumentally stupid in order to make a list like this. Yet somehow Indiana Rep. Phil Hinkle made the top ten this week by hiring a male hooker on Craigslist two weekends ago.

It wasn't just the fact that Hinkle, a married Republican who'd voted to keep marriage between men and women, tried to buy the services of a rent boy a la George Reikers and Ted Haggard. That was just the beginning.

What catapulted this Larry Craig lookalike and actalike into the #5 spot was showing his identification when checking into the hotel with the 18 year-old youth (he reportedly left his whip behind). When the boy began to freak out over Hinkle's age and status as a state lawmaker, the 64 year-old then grabbed the boy's ass, exposed himself to him and told him he couldn't leave. And when the boy's sister showed up, he then gave them his iPad, $100 in cash and his Blackberry. The cell phone was Hinkle's entire portable database including not only his phone contacts (like his house, which the sister then called to let his wife know what he was up to) but also the complete transcript of the emails he'd sent the boy earlier that day.

That requires a very special kind of stupid so pure and distilled as to border on self-satirizing genius. So, bottoms up, Mr. Hinkle, I just made you famous.

4) Rep. Tim Griffin

Making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who’s liberal or nice…

Next time the Republican Party chafes under comparisons to the Nazi Party, tell them about this story: The office of freshman Tea Bagger Congressman Tim Griffin (R-Hopey Changey, AR) has compiled and distributed a watch list of six political “activists” who don’t even live in Griffin’s home state of Arkansas. In fact, the six people live in Daniel Webster’s district. You may remember Webster: He’s the evangelical God bag who’d unseated Alan Grayson.

Apparently, it doesn’t matter to the paranoid staffers in Griffin’s office that all six live in Webster’s district or that none of the six had been to town halls outside of central Florida. But far from this being a mere list, the dossiers also feature photographs and other detailed information about the six members who were painted as Organize Now and Moveon members, although only two are actually affiliated with Organize Now and none with Moveon. In fact, the only thing these so-called activists have in common is asking tough questions of Dan Webster.

But it gets better. The handout demands the media ask them tough, McCarthyesque questions, such as:

"Are you or have you ever been, a leader, or a member, or a supporter of OrganizeNow.org, OrganizeFlorida.org, or Moveon.org (sic) or any other Progressive Left group?"

To its credit, the media refused to ask such questions. And why Griffin and his staffers are paranoid that these six Floridians will eventually migrate to Arkansas is anyone’s guess. That's kind of like Brazil worrying about an invasion of polar bears.

.oO Please, God, don’t let them find out that I’m Bush’s Mini Me! Oo.

“Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.” – Molly Ivins, Sept. 13, 2005

Governor Goodhair (thank you, Molly) made the #3 spot this week by calling Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid “Ponzi schemes.”

If there’s one thing America so incredibly doesn’t need, it’s another ill-educated Republican evangelical flyboy runt from the Texas Governor’s mansion who thinks prayer is the answer to all of the Lone Star state’s problems. Earlier this year, Perry led drought-stricken Texans in a “rain prayer” that was so efficacious, the drought got worse for three straight months. Undeterred, he then went to Houston and took part in a mass religious orgy called “The Response.”

And this egotistical runt with his Sharpie pen is calling Social Security and other entitlement programs "Ponzi schemes"? God help us, hopefully better than he did Texas.

2) Mittens Romney

If Mitt Romney was any more corporate, he’d do feasibility studies before having sex with his wife. Remember, this is about a guy who said the day of the GOP debate, “Corporations are people, my friend.”

It’s one thing to legally exploit an 1886 Supreme Court ruling that was vandalized by the former president of a railroad but Romney’s belief that corporations being flesh and blood people is frighteningly sincere and forceful. Suddenly, Romney’s inhumane treatment of the family dog during a vacation makes sense when you realize his inability to distinguish between amoral and immoral, sociopathic corporations and the human beings they victimize.

Mitt Romney is simply the scariest person to ever run for President, which is saying a mouthful when one remembers the freakazoids the GOP has fielded over the last 50 years.

By all accounts, Bachmann refused to show up until Perry's speech was over (her staffers were even texting fundraising officials inside asking if Perry was done speaking) and when she finally entered like a conquering hero, didn't even acknowledge the Texas Governor's physical presence.

Later the homophobe who'd once shown that George W. wasn't the only bush she loved clinging to while avoiding gay activists even hilariously denied avoiding Perry. What apparently was lost on every Republican in attendance was that Bachmann's campaign bribed 6000 Iowans to vote for her by buying their $30 tickets to a political event at the state fair at a cost of $180,000. Oh, did I mention Randy Travis and how she bussed in the C&W star and his fans to the event? All told, Bachmann spent at least $1,000,000 to beat Ron Paul by 152 votes in a glorified popularity contest held in her own home state.

Yep. It was the late Robert Urich's ill-fated swan song. It was one of those lead balloons into which show business moguls spend enormous time, money and resources into keeping off the ground, like Broadway's Spider Man musical.